ARTSWorcester presents: A Precise Ecstasy

Paintings Inspired by Scientific Imagery, Works by Michael Hachey

March 1, 2007

March 16 through April 13, 2007, at the ARTSWorcester Aurora Gallery, 660 Main Street, Worcester, MA

Artist Reception: Friday, March 30, 2007 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm at the Aurora Gallery 660 Main Street, Worcester, MA. This occasion is free and open to the public and will feature refreshments and music

A Precise Ecstasy – Paintings Inspired by Scientific Imagery is an exploration by ARTSWorcester member Michael Hachey into imagery and concepts in contemporary science. “Of particular attraction to me,” explains Mr. Hachey, “has been imagery created by technologies which expand our normal visual perception: electron microscopy, X-rays, sonar and radar, magnetic resonance imaging, thermal imaging, or radio astronomy. This expansion of our vision ranges from the most micro to macro scales, from cloud chamber photographs of subatomic particles to digitized maps of cosmic background radiation. In between lie images such as cellular structures, monstrous dust mites, or the cracked surface textures of Io.”

“My start in this direction,” he continues, “was related to my teaching of visual design, the foundation studio course in form and color. I’ve always found that students are attracted to a vocabulary of design in nature much more readily than to a vocabulary of strictly formal art terms. In comical irony, I quickly became my own best student whose collection of images was complemented by avid reading in the increasingly rich genre of contemporary science writing. If there is a core to that reading, it is in issues of cosmology: the origin, evolution, and end of the universe. The paintings are hardly specific “pictures” of scientific phenomena; they are, rather, distillations, abstractions, and emblems of scientific concepts. This is especially true of the concentric circle paintings as they are meditations on our being at the perceptual center of a universe which is expanding at an accelerating rate in all directions.”

Michael Hachey is a native of the Worcester area and has been an artist and studio teacher for over thirty years. He holds an M.F.A.and a B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art. He has exhibited in many venues including the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Hewlett Gallery of Carnegie Mellon University, the Worcester Art Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Boston Center for the Arts, and the Abbington Art Center in Pennsylvania. He has been the recipient of several Artist Fellowships and project grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the New England foundation for the Arts , and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. In 1996 he was awarded a United States Federal Government Art-in-Architecture commission for his mural, A Wall for Quock Walker, at the Harold F. Donahue Federal Building and Courthouse in Worcester.

His artwork has evolved from miniature architectural fantasies to on-site installations of sculpture with mural-size drawing of chalk-on-blackboard, to musically-abstract color grids, to his present paintings inspired by scientific imagery.

A veteran teacher, Mr. Hachey has taught at the School of the Worcester Art Museum, Clark University, and currently is Professor and Chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Worcester State College.

This show was made possible in part with a Worcester State College Faculty Grant.

Gallery hours: Tuesdays and Saturdays 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Extended hours are available by appointment. Gallery is closed Sunday and Monday. Free and open to the public.

Address: 660 Main Street, Worcester, MA

Information: (508) 755-5142 or www.artsworcester.org or email to:info@artsworcester.org

Currently at the ARTSWorcester Quinsigamond Community College Gallery: through April 13 is Places and Spaces, exhibition of pastel paintings by Nancy E. Von Hone. From April 17 – June 29 will be The Painted Image, works by painter Tom Grady.